This morning, Beth Lisser tweeted a link to an article in The Globe and Mail entitled, “Ontario’s $1.5 Billion Kindergarten Hoax.” I heard of this article before, but I didn’t read it until today. I’ll admit, it made me mad! While I teach Grade 5 now, I taught Kindergarten for 8 years, and I really believe in the value of the Full-Day Kindergarten Program. I communicate with many incredible Full-Day Kindergarten teachers online, and their ideas inspire me to re-look at the value of inquiry in the classroom and re-think my teaching approach. Statistics are funny though, and I think that sometimes when we look at the numbers, we miss the story behind those numbers.

There’s a link in the article to the Final Report: Evaluation of the Implementation of the Ontario Full-Day Early-Learning Kindergarten Program. I’m going to admit that I didn’t read the entire report, but I did peruse most of it, and I saw enough to know that there’s another side to the figures.

• One big concern is with the numbers. There are often up to 30 students in the classroom. Yes, these numbers are large, but for two years, I team-taught Kindergarten with 42 students in a class, so this seems small by comparison. It’s important to remember that there are two adults in the classroom, working together to facilitate learning. I think that’s the important part. When the adults collaborate, and both work together to plan and assess students, the report indicates greater success.
• It’s about adopting the program. The Full-Day Kindergarten Program speaks to the value of inquiry. It’s about small group support. It’s about the power of choice and voice. It’s about creating provocations for learning, and then following through to extend that learning. The report looks at different Full-Day Kindergarten classroom environments, and the one with the greatest success was the one that really adopted the use of inquiry. The one with the least success was the one where the teacher ran a more traditional program with more full-class instruction and less choice. Change can be hard! The success of the program rests partially in people making a big change to their teaching style.
• It’s about collaboration. Teachers, DECEs, and possibly EAs need to all work and plan together to help students succeed. This can be difficult. Each adult can possibly have a different philosophy when it comes to student learning, and it’s important to see the value in the varying thoughts. I think it’s incredible how much we can learn from each other, and what a great opportunity to have different experts in the room!
• It’s about the home/school connection. The carryover at home is so important, as then parents can help reinforce the skills learned at school. They can’t do this though if they don’t know what’s happening in the classroom. This is where communication is key! I know many Full-Day Kindergarten educators with incredible blogs: learning is shared with the parents, and through comments, parents can share the “home learning” with the school.
• It’s about differentiated instruction. One concern was about the number of students in the Kindergarten classrooms that need additional support. There were students with behavioural needs and special needs, and the argument was that the other students did not get support. I think that this is where differentiated instruction is critical! If students need more structure, then look at how to provide them with this structure: be it through more specific choices, small group intervention, or social stories to outline expectations. Capitalize on student interest to help engage students and eliminate behavioural difficulties. Will this plan be perfect? Maybe not. But it’s worth a try!
• It’s about capitalizing on what is available. There’s discussion in the article about the need for more tools to document student learning. Even as a Grade 5 teacher, I document the student learning each day with the use of an iPad (my own) and sometimes the Livescribe Pen (also mine). Yes, I’m in a school where I have access to many devices and many students bring their own, but this documentation and assessment, really happens with one (and sometimes two) devices. I walk around all day with my iPad, and I use this to capture learning. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s incredibly powerful! Thanks to Storify, I can share all of these photographs, videos, recordings, and tweets with parents on our Daily Shoot Blog. Ideally, if each adult in a Full-Day Kindergarten classroom has a device, then this learning is documented and shared by everyone.

As a Grade 5 teacher, I’ve spent this year really looking at how the Full-Day Kindergarten Program model can be applied to other grades. I’ve tried to create a classroom environment that is rich in inquiry and full of accountable talk. I’ve seen the benefits! Students are thinking in ways that they never have before. They’re more eager to learn, and have become more self-directed learners. And I teach 29 students with a wide variety of needs — from those with autism, to those with learning disabilities, and those that are gifted — and every one of them has benefitted from this environment. Yes, my students are older, but the philosophy remains the same.

What are your experiences with Full-Day Kindergarten? How do you view the statistics? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this!

Aviva